American chemist Dudley R. Herschbach was first drawn to science by reading National Geographic as a child, and studied under E. Bright Wilson at Harvard, where he spent most of his academic career. Herschbach has been at the forefront of a new field of science, molecular stereodynamics, the measurement and theoretical analysis of vector properties of reaction dynamics. He won the Nobel Prize in 1986, for developing the "crossed molecular beam technique" in which molecular beams are brought together at extreme speeds for facilitate improved studies of chemical reactions. He has also experimented with catalytic supersonic expansion reactions, dimensional scaling, molecule orientation in collision stereodynamics, and slowing and trapping molecules, and played himself in a 2003 episode of The Simpsons.